Lockers are used in many situations for a great variety of reasons. Students, for example, use lockers to store books, jackets, food, and the like, while at school, and workers often have lockers at their place of employment, to either store their work clothes, or perhaps to store personal items during work. Lockers can, however, be found in many other places, including fitness gyms, locker-rooms or any other place where a person may require temporary storage. The average locker is generally tall enough to allow the user to the hang a coat or jacket onto one or more provided hooks, and is generally wide enough to allow the user to place a pair of shoes or several books within the locker. In some lockers, a shelf has been added near the top of the locker, usually above the hooks, to provide for additional surface area on which for the user may place items.
Lockers, however, are usually very narrow, and even with the addition of a shelf the user has very limited surface area on which to place items. A high school student, for example, may on any given day bring a lunch, several books, a coat, a gym bag, and writing utensils to school, all of which need to be stored in the locker. With the limited amount of space, the coat may be placed on a hook, the gym bag placed on the floor of the locker, the books placed on a shelf (if provided), and the remainder of the items will be placed on top of each other, possibly breaking, crushing, or otherwise damaging one or more of the items. If the items are not damaged, the user will have a difficult time getting access to some of the items without having to move one or more items out of the way.
Several devices have been created to add more surface area, and hence more available storage space to the inside of lockers. These devices, however, have resulted in shelves that either have not fully solved the problem, are difficult to use, and/or create new problems. One device, for example, disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,671,990 includes a shelf that is hung from a plurality of hooks within the locker. The hung shelf creates additional surface area within the locker, but also prevents the hooks from being used to hold other items such as coats and jackets. Another device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,500,146 includes four vertical poles and a set of shelves, wherein the vertical poles are placed in the four corners of the locker and the shelves are attached to the vertical poles via a series of holes located on the vertical poles. There are several problems with this device, including that it is difficult to move into and out of the locker, that the vertical poles further limit the available space, and that the shelves are restricted in their vertical placement to the height of the four poles.
There are also two-piece and three-piece shelf devices that have attempted to add surface area inside a locker. A two-piece locking shelf device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,221,013 includes two-shelf like sections that lock into each other thereby creating in combination a hinge type mechanism. The two sections are engaged and folded prior to placement in the locker and are then wedged between the locker walls by unfolding the sections inside the locker. This design is difficult to install, however, and the lack of an adjustment mechanism, once in the locker, may not allow the device to fit into every locker.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,421,646 discloses a three-piece ratcheting shelf device includes two ratcheting shelf sections and a cam, whereby the cam moves the two sections relative to each other, which are then locked into place by a set of ratcheting teeth. In this device, however, it is difficult to get enough torque on the cam to properly tighten the device between the locker walls, and once installed, it is difficult to remove the shelf because one or more small tabs have to be pressed to release the ratcheting shelves from each other.